Baby Bring The Rain
by The Soup
Summary: Surviving a zombie apocalypse won't leave you without scars, and Nick was unfortunately stuck with the mental/emotional kind. Thunderstorms bring back bad memories. Ellis/Nick, pre-slash.


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><strong>T<strong>here was something about rain that just got to him. No, that wasn't quite it – He hated rain. Was bothered by it even on a physical level: Flashbacks came to him when it rained, and when the flashbacks came, so did the nightmares. His therapist pinpointed the trigger - thunderstorms. They brought it on; few comforts could stop it, prevent it, ease it away. Claps of thunder and thrumming rain on the roof, on windows and doors forced his mind to bring to shape again trauma survived, only three years ago.

And the images...

They were horrifying - had happened, they were real.

They had happened, and that's what entangled him.

He didn't wake easy, those stormy nights. Thrashing, hollering, _sweatingshoutingsobbing_ - a wailing anguished man, howling and clawing at his bed spread, at his face. Blood streaked his fingernails in the morning, and the horror of the past would be just as fresh as the bleeding scratches decorating his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Some nights... Some nights, he wouldn't wake until the storm passed. Other nights, the lucky ones, he'd awaken as soon as he felt someone at his side.

Most nights, however, when the storms rolled in during sweltering summers, he wouldn't wake until morning.

The pills the psychiatrist prescribed, they made it better. Melatonin supplements which helped him both sleep and forget. Didn't cure it, but made him forget and get some rest - to once again store away those frightful memories.

But he ran out of them, and the pharmacy wasn't open on Sundays. So he had nothing to block the flashing images, the sound-bites humming from his echoic memory, and the terrifyingly realistic sensations from emerging in the dream world of his hellish subconscious.

Those nights when the rain came hard and the thunder gods argued, Nick was a helplessly broken man.

* * *

><p>It was Ellis' idea one night, while they were watching television.<p>

The Weather Channel showed the Local on the 8's, with colorful barometric diagrams and satellite images.

"Looks like a big one's comin' this way, Nick."

"Mm-hm." It was all Nick had to say on the matter. Ignoring his stomach's ominous clenching, he shoveled a handful of their shared DVD popcorn into his yap, subconsciously seeking comfort in the crunching that grinded his molars. He and Ellis were having a movie night, and Ellis had brought over some cheesy cowboy movie - something John Wayne - that had somehow survived the zombie infestation. All through the last twenty minutes of the flick, Nick's hunch nagged him to check the weather.

His hunch correct, he wasn't sure how to deal with it.

"I'm out of pills," he said. "Fucking Christians and their Church…"

"Hey now, Nick, I'ma take offense to that. I'll have ya know my mama raised me righ' like any ol' Southern boy and she took me to Mass eve'y Sunday." Ellis nodded his head in the nostalgia of his tale: "Yep, she took me an' Keith eve'y Sunday, and that's when we had a lotta our adventures. Like, this one time while the Priest was a-goin' on an' on 'bout the end of the world and death to all the fornicators and shit, me and Keith, we was – "

"Yeah, yeah, well thanks to the Good Lord's Day, I'm going to fucking dream of the goddamned safe house near the sugar factory, and the fucking…." Nick couldn't get it out, his tongue tying up. "Th-the _fuckin_'…-Jesus goddamn Christ…!" His voice lost all of its power, crackling with despair, went soft and hoarse and croaky. "…Fuck. Fuck me… goddammit, god DAMN it! FUCK ME!"

He slouched forward for comfort as his vision blackened around the edges, his mind dredging up memories… If he hadn't mentioned the incident, he wouldn't be on the verge of blacking out, his heart rate pounding a tribal rhythm on his ribcage, a chilly sweat broken and breaking everywhere along his neck, forehead, back…

"Nick? Nick, ya all right?"

When he felt Ellis rubbing his back in gentle roving circles, Nick's vision cleared. The spots vanished behind his eyelids just as his heart rate went normal and his breathing regulated. He swallowed to wet his mouth, to bring himself back to reality away from traumatic fogs floating in his psyche.

"I'm f-fine…" He forcibly shoved the popcorn bowl off his lap, showering the floor with salted buttery kernels. "Goddammit!" Frustrated, he dug his hands into his scruffy scalp, elbows resting on his knees like weights, causing the blood to pool up at his kneecaps from the pressure.

"It's all right, Nick," Ellis said. "Ya got nothin' t'be afraid of no more…" He put his arm around Nick and pulled him into his side. "Let it out…"

"I'm not crying, you fucker." Nick massaged his eye sockets to ease his on-coming sleep and drug deprivation-migraine. "Just so…-"

"I know that, I'm jus' sayin' it in case ya ever felt the need…"

"I'm just so goddamned tired of all this shit…" Nick said, allowing tension to flow out his body as he relaxed against Ellis. "The doc said at least another year or so before it goes away. He said that I was fucking lucky, that I'm making progress. He told me that some people never get over their shellshock or whatever the fuck it is… Fuckin' unicycling Christ."

"Nick, yer doin' fine. Yer near cured, ain'tchu? I think it's not too much longer 'fore you don' even think about it no more…"

"For fuck's sake Ellis, I can't sleep when it fucking rains. And… fuck, I used to love the sound of a storm as a kid. It used to help me sleep… isn't that just fucking ironic?" Nick gave a half-snort in spite of himself.

Ellis didn't have anything to comment on the irony. He didn't really think it was all that funny. Just sad. So he sat there with his arm caressing Nick's shoulder.

"Hey, hey I got an idea! How 'bout you don' sleep at all tonight, and tomorrow we get yer pills first thing in the mornin'?"

"That's just ridiculous. Staying up all night's not going to cure me."

"All I'm sayin' is, if y'don' go to sleep, y'won' have them night terrors in the first place. I can't wake you up when those happen, but at least if you don' sleep at all, yer safe," Ellis said. "And don' worry, I'ma stay up with you."

"You can't do that," Nick said, getting up to fix a drink in the kitchen. He continued the conversation as he sauntered into the other room. "You have to be up in the morning for work."

"Work ain't important." Ellis stood up. "Not more important than you, anyways."

Nick stopped in the middle of getting ice out of the freezer, the cubes held in his fingertips, when he heard Ellis' words. Seconds after, the mechanic appeared in the kitchen doorway and Nick continued fixing himself something to ease the tension, as if he weren't fazed by those tender type of things, dropping cubes and letting them clatter.

"Y'know that, right?" Ellis leaned his shoulder on the doorframe, his hat titled to the side all jaunty and defiant.

"Hrm," Nick said, which wasn't much of a word in the first place. He poured himself a little bourbon.

"Yer the most important thing in my life, Nick."

"Don't say that."

"I'm sayin' it, and I already said it 'fore."

Nick's brow wrinkled with quickening stress. "Ellis… you're…"

"Yea, yea, I know…" Ellis looped his arms around Nick's truck from behind, nuzzling the side of his face against the lumpy knots of Nick's back. "Jus' give it a shot. No harm done, right? You don' haveta work tomorrow, an' I ain't gotta be in 'til three…"

Nick, closing his eyes, relaxed into Ellis' viselike embrace unsure of what to do next. "All right then. We'll give it a shot." All he could do was hope for the best, and that's what he did with his eyes closed and his mind mushy from exhaustion and Ellis' body heat warming him up.

"We'll be fine…" Ellis said. He tightened his grip around Nick. "We jus' gotta be."

* * *

><p>;I own nothing but the words and situations I control.<br>First time writing for Left For Dead 2.  
>Written for the 10_hurt_comfot Lifejournal community. Prompt "Thunderstorm."<br>COMPLETE.


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